The instant I took the Fox-Frog-Slip’s hand to begin the challenge, a sudden great cracking noise filled the sky, as if the heavens were about to burst open.

  The Fox-Frog-Slip released his grip and took several steps away from me until he was standing beneath the stone bridge.

  At the same time, Little Me, who was now awake, had gotten to his feet and was holding onto the scruff of my black jumper. I put my arm around Little Me and watched as the Fox-Frog-Slip raised his right hand above his head.

  A great golden light filled the sky with the kind of brightness that it was as if the sky itself was suddenly alight with golden flames.

  And I knew, without a doubt, that I was seeing some form of what I had seen recorded footage of throughout my childhood: The Golden Sky.

  Eighteen years ago, the sky all over the world had shone bright, shimmering gold for seven minutes.

  I doubted it was a coincidence that whatever it was the Fox-Frog-Slip was doing, and was about to do, shared a great resemblance to the Golden Sky eighteen years ago.

  “This is the power of creation itself!” the Fox-Frog-Slip yelled.

  And it was then another great golden flash filled the sky, becoming a golden lightning bolt which broke through the stone railway bridge in an instant.

  That golden energy that had just broken through the stone bridge was caught by the Fox-Frog-Slip and poured into him through his palm as if he were some kind of superconductor.

  “Big Me, I’m scared!” cried Little Me.

  He hugged me tightly, and I held him close. Great heaps of stone debris fell away from the bridge as it collapsed. A sphere of light, like a bubble-shield, protected the Fox-Frog-Slip, me, and Little Me from the falling debris.

  Just when I thought there had been enough destruction and ear-wrecking noise, the raw golden energy continued to build until everything that wasn’t inside the golden-shield-bubble protecting the three of us became completely enveloped in that same golden energy.

  The shriek of the energy peaked, and all at once fell away. The golden light beyond the shield bubble, as well as the shield bubble itself, vanished.

  My eyes smarted to the drastic change in light, and my ears hummed in the absence of the immense shrieking before.

  The world was dark, but this was mainly because my eyes were still adjusting from the near-blinding light before.

  The sky no longer shone gold and had returned to clear blue.

  But the world around us was greatly changed. First, I felt it in the air, which was open, and no longer contained as it had been within the confines of the narrow stone pathway beside the River Ching.

  I couldn’t help but gasp at what I saw all around me.

  What had been the copy of Lowems Park within my Mindspace had been totally annihilated. In its place was a desert-like expanse of dirt that stretched on as far as I could see. Maybe, perhaps, there was something far off on the horizon, but there were other things demanding my attention.

  I looked down at Little Me, who still had his head pressed against my ribcage.

  “It’s okay,” I said, holding him a bit tighter with my right arm, “We’re okay.”

  Several paces away, the Fox-Frog-Slip was standing with his legs in a wide stance and his closed fists at his sides. His eyes were glowing gold, and golden energy crackled around him.

  His attention wasn’t on me, but instead seemed to be introspective, and desperate, as if he were concentrating his entire will on not letting the golden energy he had absorbed destroy him from the inside out.

  Strained grunts and growls escaped the Fox-Frog-Slip’s throat. His body trembled, and I began to fear that this was going to be the challenge I was about to face.

  Me, up against the Fox-Frog-Slip, teeming with a fragment of the immense energy he had drawn down from the sky.

  “HAH!” The Fox-Frog-Slip yelled, and for a horrible moment, I thought he was going to vaporise both myself and Little Me to ashes with that intense golden energy.

  Instead, something bizarre happened.

  Two golden silhouettes, like standing shadows made of golden light, emerged out of the Fox-Frog-Slip on either side of him.

  And rapidly the two golden silhouettes multiplied into four, then into eight, then into sixteen. In a matter of seconds, besides the Fox-Frog-Slip himself, there stood a small army of golden silhouettes lined up in rows.

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  “What’s happening?” said Little Me, above the sound of the whirring energies of the army of golden silhouettes and the Fox-Frog-Slip’s grunts and growls.

  “I don’t know,” I said, honestly.

  I had anticipated each of the golden silhouettes to take on the same shape as the Fox-Frog-Slip, but yet again, I found myself having to make sense of the increasingly abnormal things that were taking place.

  One by one, each silhouette took on a new shape; some bigger than the Fox-Frog-Slip, others smaller.

  The golden energy that had been contained within the Fox-Frog-Slip seemed to have been dispersed among the different-shaped golden silhouettes.

  ‘The power of creation’, the Fox-Frog-Slip had said, and I finally understood why.

  The army of golden silhouettes solidified into real, material beings of colour, tone, and texture.

  Little Me gasped, and I almost did the same at the sight that stood before us.

  Joining the Fox-Frog-Slip were dozens of humanoid creatures.

  Standing to the Fox-Frog-Slip’s immediate right was a humanoid woman, with a form that was a combination of axolotl-panda bear, wearing a black martial artist gi of the same kind the Fox-Frog-Slip also wore.

  Standing to the Fox-Frog-Slip’s immediate left was a humanoid male frog with heavy wolf characteristics, wielding a long wooden staff and also wearing the same black martial arts gi.

  Each humanoid martial artist creature, that appeared to be some combination of amphibian and carnivorous mammal, created a sudden awe and fascination in me to learn more about them.

  “Wow,” said Little Me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Wow.”

  Was this the challenge? An army of martial artists that were of the Fox-Frog-Slip’s kind?

  “The power to create worlds,” I said in a whisper, understanding more of what the Fox-Frog-Slip had meant before.

  “Yes,” said Fox-Frog-Slip, who took several measured steps ahead of his kind.

  “The power to no longer be alone, to be different, to be nothing,” said Fox-Frog-Slip, “When your power belongs to me, I’ll bring forth an entire world for my kind.”

  “But it’s not real,” I said.

  Fox-Frog-Slip scowled, “Who are you to say what is real? The power makes it real.”

  He raised his left arm to the army of his kind behind him, all of whom were grumbling, growling, and looked ready to fight. I spotted a humanoid female red-hued-newt-polecat martial artist wielding sais, which to my eyes looked like two large dinner forks.

  “How’s this a fair challenge?” I said.

  Fox-Frog-Slip smirked and raised his right arm so that both his arms were spread wide.

  “I have divided my power and skill among these ninety-nine warriors,” yelled Fox-Frog-Slip.

  “Because you are so pathetically weak, this is the only fair challenge I could devise.”

  Fox-Frog-Slip gestured with a clawed thumb to himself.

  “If you want the honour of fighting me again, you’ll first have to defeat every single one of these warriors.”

  “I don’t have time to fight them all!” I shouted, “I’ve got Sweet-Face coming to destroy me any minute!”

  “Idiot,” said Fox-Frog-Slip, “Time here is progressing many times faster than it is in the surface world. That also means you won’t be able to rely on slowing your time perception to give you an advantage in combat. In fact, you’re not going to be able to rely on any of your powers except your raw fighting technique.”

  “What?!” I said.

  I looked at my palm and tried to will a resin ball to emerge from the skin. Nothing happened. I could still feel the acute ache in my mind from where I was continuing to heal the last of the bruising from my previous fight with the Fox-Frog-Slip.

  But then I realised something.

  “Wait,” I said, “If I get hurt here, and time is moving faster, won’t that also mean my injuries will multiply much faster, and the strain on my mind will be greater too?”

  “Exactly,” said Fox-Frog-Slip, who seemed to be delighted to see me so unsettled.

  And then he said, “You won’t be able to fall back on any tricks or gimmicks.”

  I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth. This was bad. Really bad.

  “Big Me!” shouted Little Me from beside me.

  I fixed my attention on him. His own hands were balled into fists, and he was looking at me as if furious.

  “You can do this!” he yelled, “You’re Burgess O’Bannon! Don’t forget that! If there’s not a way forward--”

  “--make one,” I said, joining in the words Little Me was parroting back from what I said to Snap and the others.

  “Yeah!” yelled Little Me, “You wanted to train hard. This is it. Don’t get scared now. You need to be brave!”

  “Get out of here, you little runt, before you get hurt,” said Fox-Frog-Slip.

  “Shut up, baldie!” Little Me snapped back.

  “I oughta break you in half like a biscuit!” yelled Fox-Frog-Slip back, his temples throbbing with rage.

  Little Me hid behind me and made a not-so-nice gesture in Fox-Frog-Slip’s direction.

  The Fox-Frog-Slip seemed to be about to fly into a rage, but, with what looked like a great deal of effort, he regained his poise and turned his attention to the ninety-nine martial artists warriors of his kind wearing black gis.

  “Warriors!” he bellowed, and the ninety-nine growled, and roared, and screeched back in one unified chorus.

  “I have brought you here to this world between worlds!” yelled Fox-Frog-Slip, “So that you can fight for your right to exist! All you have to do is destroy him!”

  Fox-Frog-Slip pointed with a black clawed nail to me, and all at once I felt one-hundred pairs of enemy eyes locked onto me.

  I looked down at Little Me, and then knelt down to match his eye-level.

  “Hey,” I said.

  I could see Little Me was red-faced, angry, and afraid, with tears in his eyes.

  “I’m scared,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said, forcing a smile and confidence I didn’t really feel, “I’ll be fine. I need you to get away from here. I’ll come find you when it’s all over, okay?”

  I rubbed the tears out of Little Me’s eyes.

  “You mean it?” said Little Me in a choking voice.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ve got this.”

  I patted him on the arm, as if to spur him on to hurry away to safety. But then he dove towards me, and braced me in as firm a hug as he could muster.

  I eased him away, ruffled his fluffy brown hair, and gave him a little push.

  Little Me cried as he ran as fast as he could towards the distant horizon. There was a great deal of destroyed earth, turned tan and dusty in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the great golden energy brought down by Fox-Frog-Slip.

  And then, everything became quiet and was punctuated only by a stiff breeze.

  “Well?” said the Fox-Frog-Slip, “Attack!”

  All at once, the ninety-nine martial arts warriors of Fox-Frog-Slip’s kind charged forth to attack me.

  They were fast, ferocious, and unified in their cause.

  I breathed in a ragged breath. Exhaled just as raggedly and entered into a fighting stance.